"Film Making is fun, hard work, and always worth the effort."

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So you want to make your own films. Thanks to Digital Film Making, the opportunity is the best it's ever been. The newly available digital tools, namely high quality affordable cameras as well as readily available computer based editing software have made this dream a reality for aspiring filmmakers everywhere.

The first consideration, other than gear, would be your story - your movie idea. I have to assume that if you're looking to become a digital movie creator you probably have a specific idea in mind already. If you don't there are many ways to help inspire those ideas. Here are some fantastic methods for coming up with great Story Ideas.

Once you've got your idea it's necessary to convert it into a workable story, or Screenplay. Creating a proper screenplay can be a challenge, and it must be structured in such a way as to lend itself to the filmmaking process. Here are some guidlines for creating the proper Story Structure.

Another critical piece of the story puzzle is Character Development. Bringing your characters to life on the page is absolutely essential to creating a screenplay that will truly entertain.

Using the correct language or syntax to describe Camera Movements is also quite essential to this process. Once you've learned what's involved, creating proper camera movements can be very straightforward.

The jobs of Producing and Directing your own films are arguably the toughest in the filmmaking process. Both of these disciplines require a healthy dose of great organizational skills in order to achieve success.

While a producer is concerned with making sure everything that needs to happen while making a movie actually DOES occur, a director has many critical film duties. A director needs to be concerned with Lighting, Sound, The Camera, Locations, Props and Set, Makeup, Wardrobe, Special Effects and Working with Actors.

One of my favorite ways of engaging in filmmaking is to participate in the 48 Hour Film Project. It's a fantastic movie contest where teams of movie producers create a short film from start to finish in only one weekend. To make things interesting, all the teams must use the same prop, character and line of dialogue which are chosen randomly from a top hat. Each team also chooses its film genre this same way. If you'd like to know more, go ahead and visit our 48 Hour Film Project page anytime.

As with anything worth doing film making can be quite complicated, but the result can be so rewarding that it's always worth the effort. (In my humble opinion, anyhow...)

If you have any thoughts, ideas or experiences with creating your own movies we'd love to hear about them. You're always welcome to utilize our content submission form below for just that purpose.

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